Too many potential clients, not enough staff or capacity.
Sponsored by True Advisor: The Definitive Success Guide for Client Advisory Services by Hitendra Patil
Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/YouTube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.
Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines
“CAS is kicking CASS right now,” says Kane Polakoff, principal and CAS practice leader at CohnReznick, in the new episode of Gear Up for Growth, hosted by Jean Caragher, president of Capstone Marketing.
MORE Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here | MORE Gear Up for Growth | MORE CPA Trendlines streaming videos and podcasts here
“It’s on fire, especially over the last five or six years. The demand is incredible, but the key is having a strong delivery mechanism and the right capacity to provide real value to clients.”
Polakoff describes CAS as evolving far beyond traditional bookkeeping. “Ten or fifteen years ago, CAS was mostly bookkeeping, a means to an end for a tax return,” he says. “Today, we’re partnering with CFOs and CEOs, providing insights on key performance indicators, operational challenges, and financial strategy. It’s much more strategic.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Polakoff notes, demand for CAS services surged. “Our phones were off the hook. People all over the country were reaching out because they didn’t have the technology or processes in place to manage remotely,” he says. “We ended up growing over 100% that year. That was when I realized CAS was truly a growth engine for our firm and for the profession.”
Key to CAS success, Polakoff says, is investing in talent and leadership. “One of the biggest mistakes firms make is not dedicating leadership and staff fully to CAS,” he says. “If someone is splitting time with tax or assurance, they won’t be able to deliver the level of service and strategic insight clients need. You have to make that investment.”
Polakoff on CAS:
Learn from experienced leaders: “Reach out to those who have built successful CAS practices. The accounting profession is incredibly collaborative; don’t try to do it in isolation.”
Focus on processes and standardization: “SOPs, technology, and project management are crucial. Rapid growth without these can cause a practice to implode.”
Embrace change: “Change is constant, and being open to it allows you to implement new technologies and improve client services. I love to learn, fail, and learn again. It’s part of growth.”
Polakoff also highlighted the importance of vertical specialization in CAS practices. “When you hire people with deep expertise in a specific industry, they can provide tailored advisory services that make a real difference,” he says. “It allows your team to scale those verticals like their own business while providing clients with experts who understand their industry nuances.”
Technology and AI are reshaping CAS delivery, Polakoff says. “We’re deploying automation and AI to handle repetitive tasks, so our staff can focus on analyzing numbers, identifying trends, and advising clients,” he says. “It’s not about replacing people. It’s about enabling our staff to provide higher-level insights and better service. Human intelligence plus technology equals higher IQ for the team and more value for the client.”
About Kane Polakoff
Kane Polakoff is a principal and CAS practice leader at CohnReznick. He has more than 25 years of experience developing and implementing strategic services and solutions to help businesses drive operational growth and value.
Kane has spoken at industry conferences including the AICPA, Financial Executives International, Information Technology Alliance, and Digital CPA. He has twice been named one of the Top 100 Influential People in Accounting by Accounting Today. Contact on Linkedin
Transcript
Jean: Hello. Thank you for joining “Gear Up for Growth,” powered by CPA Trendlines. I’m Jean Caragher, President of Capstone Marketing, and your host. Today’s guest is Kane Polakoff, principal and CAS practice leader at CohnReznick. Kane has twice been named one of the top 100 influential people in accounting. Kane, welcome to “Gear Up for Growth.”
Kane: Yeah, and it’s nice to have…thanks for having me here. I look forward to our conversation.
Jean: Me too. And CAS is a big topic these days, so I know folks will want to hear what you have to say about that today.
Kane: Yeah, no, I think that is, as I like to say, CAS is kicking CASS right now. That’s kind of how I look at it, because, yeah, it is on fire, especially in the last five, six years, just the growth that I’ve seen. And you see a lot of things, a lot of publications out there. A lot of folks are looking at, I think if you look at AICPA today, they, the last three, four years of the survey they’ve had, CAS has been the top two, top three, and…which makes it fun. It’s a perfect storm. I know we’ll talk more about it, and what it means, and what’s going on, and things to look for. And I think we’ll talk about some of the challenges and things and mistakes I’ve made, but I look forward to it.
Jean: Yes. Yes, we definitely will. So, let’s start off with you sharing a bit of your journey into client accounting services, and how did your background shape your perspective on CAS?
Kane: Sure, yeah. So, I’ve been in this business for about 30 years, started my career in management consulting, and then moved into what we call business process outsourcing. And for BPO, one of the first companies I ended up being chief operating officer for, we actually acquired the RSM…at the time it wasn’t called CAS, but the CAS practice, and grew it. So, fast-forward over my last two jobs, where I built a large practice at a previous large public accounting firm, but it’s very similar to what business process outsourcing is in consulting, and when you put it within a public accounting firm, is what it becomes. And the fortunate, for me, I didn’t know it was called CAS when I joined my previous firm. Somebody said, “Hey, this is called CAS,” I didn’t know what that meant, but now I do, and happy to educate others on that. So, it’s been great. I’ve had the opportunity to kind of learn, within a public accounting firm, what are the ingredients for success? How does it work? How do you build it? Because I did, this is my second adventure, I’ll call that, to build a practice, really, from the ground up. And what does it mean? How do you go at it? How do you price? What type of people do you hire? Where do you hire them? What kind of tech stack, and all the things that come with that. And so, yeah, it’s been great. And I think everybody knows, they always say, “Is it CAS, C-A-S? Is it CAAS, C-A-A-S?” I like to say it’s client advisory services, and the second A is silent, because accounting is assumed. So, that’s the way…and I’m sticking to that.
Jean: So, tell us about the moment that convinced you that CAS could be a growth engine at CohnReznick.
Kane: Yeah, so, I’m gonna take a couple years before, during COVID, where I knew that we, I think we saw that CAS really kind of leaped into the next hemisphere, I’ll call it that. When COVID happened, there was just a lot of challenges, a lot of different organizations out there, because they didn’t make investments in technology, so their on-prem base, they didn’t have a fluid process. And right when COVID happened, which I think we all remember how challenging that was, our phones were off the hook. So, we were getting phone calls, and people all over the country were reaching out to us, and we ended up, I just remember, we just keep picking up the phone, keep picking up the phone, and people were asking for help, and there was, at a point, I didn’t even know the name of the clients. I was just trying to put it in the contract and get it going. And I think at that point, I think we grew, like, 100% that year. So, I had a pretty good indication, at that point in time, that we had something that was going for the profession, and that need. So, that demand has kind of facilitated, so, when you look at the technology, and the expense of building automation into a tech stack that provides value to our clients, and you’re able to do it in a way that’s more affordable, and provide even more value than an internal client does for themselves, that’s kind of where the demand is. And then at CohnReznick, we’ve seen that, where we’ve grown, I think the first year, we grew over 60% top line, to give you a sense of that. And we want to be smart because that’s one of the things I think about is you don’t wanna take everything on at once, so how do you scale it, and how do you support it?
But we don’t have an issue with finding new business. We don’t have an issue of building a pipeline. And so, it’s really making sure that you have, really, a good delivery mechanism in place to execute, and have the right capacity to be able to provide good service to our clients. And that’s really the challenge that you have, because the business will be here. And I think if you look at some of the other spaces, even if you look at assurance and tax, everybody is struggling to grow. In some of those cases, there are some growth, but we’re seeing double-digit growth within CAS. But it’s being able to take on the work. So, when I started here, three years ago, and we’ve grown from a handful of people to over 100 people, and growing quickly within three years, it continues. I’m hiring 40 people right now. So, if you can imagine, and you can go on my LinkedIn, hey, if you know somebody, we’re hiring 42 people as we speak, both domestically and globally, and give you an example of that. So, that’s what we’re dealing with. And so we’re trying to forecast out 12 weeks, and looking at what we existing business we have and the new business that’s coming in. But that gives you kind of an answer. There’s the growth.
Jean: Right.
Kane: I mean, I’m feeling it real-time, so…
Jean: Right. So, where are your leads coming from?
Kane: Yeah, so, there’s a combination of different things. So, I think we’ve done a good job of kind of promoting ourselves into the marketplace. And I think, with a lot of the thought leadership that our staff and we have done, is bringing that awareness to, “hey, we’re out there.” So, we are seeing web inquiries, to be honest, interesting enough. So, we’ve had a lot of web inquiries that are coming and saying “we saw you” or “we heard you talk” or, and so that’s one aspect. We still get some great referrals internally within CohnReznick, predominantly on the tax side, or… We’re broken down by verticals, so, vertical leaders. So, we’ve seen that, that happen, and then through relationships that we have in, and referrals from existing clients. So, it’s really a combination of many different things, and yeah, it makes it fun. So, it’s, the issue, I know for most companies, it’s how do you continue to grow top line? That’s not the issue. It’s how do you grow it in the right way, is really what it comes down to today.
Jean: Right, right. And we are gonna touch on that, too. So, tell us how you think CAS has evolved from just traditional bookkeeping, and what does CAS 2.0 really mean in practical terms? Are these services becoming more strategic?
Kane: Yeah. So, I think if you look at 10 or 15 years ago, it was bookkeeping. It was a means to the end for a tax return. It was, you know, let’s put baby in the corner, in a desk, and the lights are off, and just, you know, doing some data entry. And I always think, because I had that when I started my previous organization, where if you’re not a good performer on the tax side or the assurance side, we’re gonna put you in this group called CAS. And I think, over time, you know, that has changed. And I think, you know, a couple of reasons. One is, we are more strategic, I think, to your point is, you know, we are… Providing the financial statement is just one piece of the pie. It’s just, delivering that, but it’s understanding what that is, looking at the key performance indicators if it’s a real estate client or a hospitality client, or not-for-profit. And we’re partnering with the CFOs of our clients and our CEOs. And so, the type of individuals that we have to hire are outgoing, very analytical, a strong foundation in accounting. So, we are hiring top-notch talent, which I love. And we’re doing internships with, now, within colleges, and bring in top talent, so it’s interesting. Now we’re finding situations that, it’s hard for some people to transfer into our group because of the expectations of what we have and what the skill sets are. So, it’s a little bit of a change from 10 years ago, where, “here you go, and good luck,” where we are looking for… And we’ve had some great people transfer from assurance and tax, but these are top-notch people, that just wanted to be part of do something a little bit different. So, that, you know, that’s fine, but there is… We are looking for top-notch CFO, deep understanding analytical people, that can drive conversation and execution. And it’s much different than 10 years ago, “well, all right, you go and do some data entry, and then leave for the day. Thank you.” So, it is a dynamic. Yeah, I think about it, from my management consulting days, is very similar to that. It’s understanding, it’s different nuances and challenges that our clients have, making recommendations, partnering with them, and trying to help them become successful. So, it’s a different dynamic.
Jean: Right.
Kane: [crosstalk 00:09:40] that dynamic is, it’s intense, [inaudible 00:09:43] multitasking, high expectations from clients. So, just as we were becoming more strategic, we have to upscale our team to be able to take on that expectation that our clients do have.
Jean: Right, right. What is the biggest misconception CPA firm partners have about CAS when they first start to explore it, to see if this is a service line that they want to grow in their own firms?
Kane: Well, I think the assumption is, well, they’re just doing real small, little clients, and they’re very simple, and they’re not able to really grow, where they don’t realize that some of our clients we bring in $2 million in revenue for, or $3 million or…where these are large, complicated engagements, that actually can help them out, where we can cross-sell tax services, or valuation, or cost seg, or whatever that may be. And I think that, you know, what is this thing, and I think they have the misconception that it was what it was 10 years ago. And we’re not gonna…I don’t wanna bring that team on to a call with my client, because they’re gonna look bad. And I think that’s some of the things that, you have to get over that. And delivery, it’s the operations. I think the other thing, it’s, we are operations. We’re touching our client three, four, or five times a day. Things are gonna go wrong. There’s always this, operations, it doesn’t matter what organization in the world. And to know that, it’s how you handle the issues, how you communicate that, how you define the root cause. And it’s a different mentality versus if you’re only gonna talk to your client once a quarter or… So, you’re gonna hear a lot more, and there’s some of it noise, year end, and there’s always challenges from the auditing, from an auditor, and supporting information or… So, it’s a different dynamic. And so the partners need to understand they have to have some patience too, because some of these situations we get ourself in with a new client is they’re coming to us not because they’re doing a great job, but they need help. And because of that, we find issues, and we identify, and a lot of our clients don’t wanna feel like they weren’t incompetent, where they didn’t know. And so you get a lot of that too. So, the dynamics is which makes it interesting. It’s how do you navigate through that? And, you know, I think those are where the partners need to understand, it’s a different thing. Doing operations is not easy, period.
Jean: Right. Now, you touched upon technology earlier. How do you see technology reshaping how CAS services are delivered in the future?
Kane: Well, it’s, the evolution, especially in the, even in the last couple of years, has been enormous. When, you know, 30 years ago, I remember when I was implementing PeopleSoft and SAP, and this is, like, $1.5, $2 million accounts, to implement this, which, really, in providing CAS services, where… So, the cost has come way down, but also the systems have been more fluid, more open. And we all talk about OpenAI, we talk about the tech stacks that we have, and how you’re able to kind of put all the pieces together, and they’re not extremely expensive, where the data flows, in the most cases, very well. And then you get into the automation, where you hear about AP automation, and being able to build rules to reconcile credit cards or bank statements, or whatever that is, but where we’re going, where everybody talks about it, because I’ll bring it up, we haven’t talked about it for, like, 15 minutes, is AI. And it’s not from a Copilot, you know, “help me write an email.” or “let me create you an SOP.” It’s really ingraining that into the tech stack, to drive decisioning. So, which is, it’s really becoming that prepare layer, for an organization. So, I have been researching the last three years, looking at different AI providers, and how that fits into the mode. And since my journey has only been three years at CohnReznick, now we’re looking to start now deploying that. And I think that’s gonna allow, kind of the vision that I have is to have our staff spend more time looking at the numbers and creating it, so you get the numbers, and it allowing us to look at researching historically, looking at different industries, doing comparisons, providing information, then spending the time, data entry. I always used to use the analogy, 20 or 25 years ago, we had all these rooms full of people just entering invoices in, or whatever that may be. But today your folks are really looking at the result, so, reviewing what AI is gonna do our automation, and helping to analyze that. And you still need to make sure the data’s correct, just as a preparer is doing that today. But we want our…the technology is enabling us to become better. When you think about human intelligence, it’s allowing our IQ to increase, so that we can provide better services to our clients. And I think that’s what’s enabling us. And I think we’re still at the very beginning of our journey here. And I think that I’m excited, because, you know, I embrace, I love change. You know, I love to learn and to fail, and to learn again, and then finally get it right. But it’s really gonna…people are gonna have to adopt it because it’s just gonna help make things even that much better. But you do need to make sure you pick the right providers, you do the right research, you define their use cases, and you execute that going forward.
Jean: Kane, you’re one of the few people to actually tell me that they enjoy change.
Kane: Yeah, I do. I guess that’s been my whole life. It’s all about, as you hear the saying, the only constant should be change in your life. But that has been the case for me, so… And so that’s why change management is constant with me, so… [crosstalk 00:15:12] like it or not. So if you wanna work with me, then that’s an expectation, so…
Jean: Oh, boy. Okay, listen up, folks. So, how do you help clients change their perception of CAS services, that it’s not just compliance, but it is also that strategic advisory relationship that you’re building with them?
Kane: Well, we are a people business. So, we talked a lot about technology and the enablement of that. But it’s the quality of individuals that you have on your team, and building those relationships. So, when I think of our real estate clients, or our not-for-profit clients, and we have folks on our team that have, say, 20 years in real estate, or 25 years in non-for-profit, and it’s funny when I get on a prospect call or when we kick off a client, and we have the staff on with our clients, and they have, they’re speaking the same language. And I think we built our practice by verticals, for that reason. And I think they realize, “Oh, my God,” you know, “she was a CFO of a large non-for-profit.” And when we’re talking to a CFO and they’re talking, and “yeah, I’ve had this challenge,” and… So, it’s a relationship, so…to answer your question. So it’s a much different than you getting on a call for client and say, “Well, Mr. or Mrs. client, what do you want? Tell me.” Okay. So, it’s different, and there has to be recommendations. There has to be that… The data has to flow back and forth, the communication, the interaction, the, you know, all that stuff needs to… It’s building that foundation and that trust, really, what it comes down to, and for them to trust us that we could do more than what we were thinking about, so…
Jean: Right. This goes into many conversations I’ve had, and what we’re seeing in the profession these days, that, you know, AI is enabling a CPA’s work, you know, to be done differently. That opens up time that could be spent spending more time on their best clients, in that advisory role, which, we’ve talked about, let’s face it, for decades, right, of CPAs being the trusted advisor, and, you know, some of them have been, and some of them maybe not so much. I think this is another example about this is a way to ask smart questions, and to learn more about your clients, and to discover the types of CAS services that you’re able to provide to them to solve whatever the problem is that they’re having. It’s, you have to be able to ask those questions and listen to the answers, and translate that into services.
Kane: Yeah. And I think, just to kind of reiterate what you just said, it’s just not providing more CAS services. It’s providing more accounting services, whether that’s tax, or whatever that may be is. And we are, since we are the operations, and we’re integrated very closely with our clients, when our clients have a challenge, maybe it’s a legal issue, well, we can bring in a lawyer, or maybe not within our firm, but, you know, through a reference, or a referral. Or, hey, this client is now looking to acquire somebody, and they needed to have an investment banker or whatever, or using our group. So, it’s, yes, it’s the relationship has to become, you know, deep and coupled, and it takes time to establish that relationship.
Jean: Right.
Kane: And not every everybody’s perfect, not everybody wants it too, but I think that, you know, my vision is that, you know, we have those type of relationships, and like to say, if you get invited to Thanksgiving dinner with your client, then you know you’re doing something right. I’m [crosstalk 00:18:46] that myself, but [crosstalk 00:18:47] somebody does, but…
Jean: There you go. You can always hope. Can you give us an example of a client engagement that you’ve worked on, and what the outcome was on that, and how it helped the client?
Kane: Yeah. So, we had one client that was in real estate, and they were growing very quickly. So, they were in a tool, I’ll just use QuickBooks, hypothetically, for this situation. And they had a handful of properties, but they had a great vision. They were they were actually buying hotels and transforming them into apartments, [inaudible 00:19:24] so that was kind of their mantra. And they were challenged to how to scale with, you know, as their business was going very fast, their accounting department didn’t have the ability to scale and to take on the transaction volumes and things that were coming up, and the expectations there. I think our hard part, too, was keeping the staff. And you find in a lot of accounting departments, folks, there has been a lot of attrition, you know. I think people come, people go, and you wanna build that foundation. So, they came to us, and, really, with three asks. One is to create a new system that’s gonna allow them to scale, and to handle inter-company multi-entity… [inaudible 00:20:08] you look at the property [inaudible 00:20:08] because in this way, the way the system was set up, it’s, you have to do it one, one, one, one, one, and takes a lot of time, then you do a consolidation in Excel, and you can make formula errors. Two, to have an accounting department that’s able to scale up or scale down, based on their business. And three, to help them with cash flow, and so they see where things are, so they can make a determination, hey, can I go buy two properties, or, you know, do I need to slow down? So, we did, and we kind of evaluated understanding what their system is today, and kind of what their as-is process, and then we deployed a multi-entity general ledger system, and implemented that with AP automation, expense management, some other tools, so that they weren’t doing AP automation too, so all the accounts payable process was very manual.
So, we put that system in place, and then we also transitioned the work of their accounting team to us. And we have a global operation and I shared a little bit earlier, so we were able to take that on, and they’ve more than doubled in size since we started with them, and the relationship’s been really good. So, they’re getting the reports, you know, we’re there for them, we’re supporting their efforts, and, you know, we continue to evaluate ways to make things more impressive for them. And we have a great relationship, and it’s a great story for us. And I visited them in person, and, you know, it’s nice to see that there’s a value that comes with all that hard work that’s been done. It’s not simple, and I don’t want to make it…you just don’t snap your fingers and [crosstalk 00:21:42] things work, so it takes a lot of time and effort to do it, but once you’ve set it up right, then you can you can double, triple, quadruple in size, and that’s some of the value that we can bring from a CAS perspective.
Jean: Right. Right. Now, given that example, it sounds like firms could call that, you know, real estate advisory services, and not, you know, client advisory…
Kane: We call it realign. We call it realign. So, it’s real estate, R-E, aligning.
Jean: Okay.
Kane: So, it’s integration solution offering, that provides a tech stack with services combined, that helps you grow and scale.
Jean: Got it. Now, you mentioned that you grow your CAS department, I’ll say, by industry vertical. Is that what you would recommend to all firms that are thinking about CAS, or wanting to expand their, you know, CAS department?
Kane: Well, I think if, and it’s a great question, because the first time around, I didn’t do that. And we were generalist, and we were able to do more of the transactional work, but we weren’t able to move up to the value that… We eventually did. It took us some time, if we had a bunch of non-for-profit clients, and oh, right now, let’s bring out these non-for-profit people together, and have that. But, so, you know, if you wanna get more strategic, you’d wanna hire people that have that knowledge. So, yes, we are broken down by verticals, and it’s… What my recommendation would be, and I’m just one person, but I think by doing that, it’s allowed us to, one is to be able to scale those certain verticals as their own business, and then making sure we bring the people within those verticals that understand the business. Now, we do have cases where you have a major and minor, where you may major in renewable energy, but you may minor in real estate, so, you have an option to jump around. But understanding the nuances… The technology’s different, too, so what you use in a real estate client versus what you use in a government contract, in which we have our different systems, so, they get familiar with the systems, and the applications, and the nuances, and the different compliances that happen throughout the year. So, yeah, I mean, I would recommend it if I was them, but… Yeah.
Jean: I’m a big fan of, about industry niches. You know, from a marketing standpoint, it just seems to make the most sense. What are the most common mistakes firms make when they’re building their CAS practices?
Kane: All right. How much time do we have?
Jean: I should have led with that one, huh?
Kane: No, that’s okay. You can stop me. So, I’ll hit a couple things. So, it’s interesting, when I first got into client advisory services, and this is because I’m involved with cpa.com and a lot of other organizations around the country that are advocating for CAS, which, I appreciate all of them. One of the things that we saw was hiring a leader that’s 100% focused on CAS. And what we saw is, with some of the other, I do talk to different public accounting firms, and what they reach out and talk is that they bring somebody from, just say from tax, and say, “Hey, Jane or Joe, you now are responsible for CAS, but you also have to maintain your tax book.” And you think about when tax season hits, you know, how much time and effort are you gonna be able to spend on CAS?
Jean: Right.
Kane: And so I think that that’s a huge mistake, if you’re not gonna make that investment in actually making an investment in fully dedicated people too. And what you think it’s such a obvious thing, but I’ve seen situations where you’re sharing it with the tax team, or sharing with another team. And we’re an annuity business. That’s what we do. And you can’t just say [inaudible 00:25:25] that you brought them for two months, and then I’m gonna take them back and put them over there, because then, you know, who’s doing the work? So, and, you know, on the people side is having, making the investment in people that understand the industry, and have the right skill sets, and having a dedicated leader on the people side, is critical.
On the technology side is, there’s so many, you always get this, you open up your jacket, and you have all these watches, and, you know, pick which watch you want. There’s 50 of them. Well, you don’t wanna do the same thing on the technology. You wanna identify one or two… You know, we were talking about, this is the right tool for real estate, or for that. So, you wanna focus on the tools that are conducive to the vertical, and not always get all these new shiny things and put them in there, and before you know it, your team is confused, or the system’s not set up. So, you want to stabilize it by vertical, you wanna find the tools that fit very well for what you’re doing for the vertical, and if you don’t do that, then you’re gonna run into issues.
The other thing is, on the process side, standardization, SOPs. When you look at growth, if you grow too fast, and if you don’t have all that in place, you’re gonna implode. So, the other thing is, I can tell you, “Well, I’m growing 15% or 20% a year,” somebody may tell you that, but they’re not telling you, “I’m losing 15% or 20% [crosstalk 00:26:39]”
Jean: Right. Right. Yeah.
Kane: So…
Jean: The new clients are coming in the front door, and the [inaudible 00:26:43] are going out the back door.
Kane: Yeah, yeah. So, it’s just like a, it’s a tunnel. So, you wanna make sure that retention and customer experience, and all those things that, they have to be part of it. And we are different. You know, we are different. We are an operation. We’re not tax and assurance. And those are all great verticals, and great practices. But you have to run it differently. You have to look at capacity, you have to look at projections, you have to look at how you’re gonna interact with your clients. You have to have project management. So, some of these things, some of these folks that you’re gonna bring in are not gonna be billable. And if you look at a public accounting firm, and they’re gonna say, “Well, what are you talking about? You’re gonna have five people in this practice that are not billable? That’s unacceptable.” And, or the billable hours will be less. So, I think it’s fighting for that, and setting that expectation is important, because otherwise, you’re gonna need those individuals to be successful, and to grow in the right way. And I think a lot of, unfortunately, practices are growing in the wrong way, and they’re having challenges with that. So, you know, I’m not saying I’m perfect, but those are just some of the things that I’ve had to overcome, so…
Jean: Right, right. You’ve just given a lot of good advice there in that last few minutes. Is there any other piece of advice you would give to CPA firm leadership, as they’re looking to create a CAS practice?
Kane: Yeah, reach out to folks that have done it. Have those conversations that were… The one thing that’s so amazing about the accounting profession, and I didn’t come from that originally, is how open and transparent people are, and the collaboration. So, when I started, seven, eight years ago in CAS, you know, I reached out to fellow leaders, and talked to them, and technology providers, and asked questions. And I wasn’t… I didn’t wanna be in an island by myself. And so, that’s what I did. And I think there’s more of us now that have been doing it for a longer time, that can share. I’m part of different organizations, where we collaborate and talk, and so, I think it’s, you wanna hear from the operators, I call myself as an operator, the ones that are doing the work. Don’t just talk to somebody who’s just presenting about how to do it, because that’s not gonna help you. So, I think it’s understanding, really, what it takes. And you’re gonna have to make the investment, too. You can’t just go in there and just wing it. You wanna make sure you do it, and you’re focused on it, and you’re giving the attention it requires, because it’s a big task to set something up from scratch, whatever you may do in life. And you’re gonna have to have patience too. It’s not gonna just magically, everything is fantastic from day one.
Jean: Right, right. Oh, goodness. Okay. So, my last question is a bonus question.
Kane: Oh, okay.
Jean: What hobby or interest do you have that most people at work would be surprised to learn about?
Kane: What hobby? Well, my hobby at one time was playing soccer, but my wife asked me to retire, so… But I do love playing pickleball. So, that’s something that… And I broke both of my wrists and my thumb back in November, doing that. So, not…luckily, now I’m healing. But playing pickleball has always been something that I’ve been passionate about, and [crosstalk 00:30:06]
Jean: That’s a huge interest these days, right? The days when I lived in Atlanta, I played tennis a lot. A lot of tennis.
Kane: Yeah. I mean, I was an athlete a long time ago, and I think people, well, “What, you’re an athlete?” So, I mean, that’s something that I’m trying to get back and doing more things at my age to not hurt myself, because my wife gets mad at me if I do, so…
Jean: And you don’t want your wife to be mad at you, right?
Kane: Yeah, that’s for sure.
Jean: Well, I’ve been talking today with Kane Polakoff, principal and CAS practice leader at CohnReznick. Kane, thank you for sharing your insights on client advisory services today.
Kane: Yeah, thanks. It was a lot of fun. So, please reach out if any of you out there ever have any questions, and I wish everybody best of luck.
Jean: Wonderful. Thank you. And thank you for tuning in to “Gear Up for Growth.” Be sure to check us out next time, when we focus on another topic crucial for accounting firms aiming for smart growth in today’s competitive marketplace. I’ll see you then.